Dial M for Mascara

by Bevill, C. L.

  Mary Grace glowered. It wasn’t the answer she was looking for. It sounded as if he were completely innocent, yet he had that little twitch as if he were waiting for the bomb to drop. “The portrait is of me,” she said. “Is that why you’re embarrassed? Are you afraid I’ll launch a sexual harassment suit?”

  Jack glanced down and angry red colored his cheeks. At least the cheeks she could see and not the ones that popped into her head. She hadn’t thought about Jack that way before and hadn’t realized he was thinking about her in that way. If he had told her a week before one Detective Frederick Brogan had come crashing into her life, she might have been interested enough to see where it went. But Jack hadn’t. And Brogan had.

  “Is that why you don’t want to press charges against me?” No reason to bring Callie into the whole breaking-and-entering thing if I don’t have to. “Quid pro quo? I don’t squeal about the portrait and you don’t sign on the dotted line?”

  Jack stood halfway up again and then sat back down promptly. “No, dammit. That’s not what I was thinking. I just wanted to…I only thought I was going to…aw, screw this.”

  Mary Grace stared. She didn’t think she’d ever seen Jack Covington flustered before. It was a novel experience. There had been the Bertrand contract which had folded faster than a john hitting a hooker in the stomach. Jack had regrouped and rounded up new business to fill in the large gap that the million dollar contract had represented. But he’d never been flustered. He’d reputedly had a nasty custody battle with his wife over their son, but in the whole time that it had been going on, Mary Grace hadn’t seen Jack less than professional and ready to do business with the world.

  Finally, she said, “I hope you understand why I did what I did, Jack. I shouldn’t have gone into your house, but the police weren’t listening to me. They thought I was a screwball and when my mother identified me in the morgue was the only time they would take me seriously. I didn’t know what else to do.” With that she stood up, extracted Jack’s pilfered keys from her pocket, and carefully placed them in front of him on his desk.

  Jack nodded shortly, giving the keys a short and pained look. “I do understand that. I also understand that you didn’t find anything at my house except that stupid portrait.”

  “So what were you doing at Pictographs on Friday night?” Mary Grace prompted gently.

  “I came to…” Jack coughed into his hand and finished the remainder in a gruff rush, “ask you out.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me,” he snapped. “Everyone knows you work late on Friday nights since you dumped Ivan. It’s a regular habit with you. I thought we could go to dinner and the rest of the staff wouldn’t know about it. And if you said no, well, then no one else would see me get rejected.”

  Mary Grace kind of fell back into the chair she was sitting in, which was difficult because it was so completely straight-backed. “Well, that wasn’t what I was expecting,” she said idly.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I used you as a model in my head and now half the police department thinks your breasts should be worshipped.”

  “What?”

  Jack shrugged impolitely. “Detective Bloodsaw took the portrait as evidence. I think he thinks I’m stalking you. Well that whole week I was at that Graphic Design Conference in Vegas when your rental blew up. I didn’t hear about what happened to your car until Saturday, when my secretary told me about it. Then I came to see you, remember? Flowers and Tom Clancy book ring a bell?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Mary Grace muttered. “You were gone.”

  “And the other incident,” Jack continued. “I didn’t realize that when you said you’d been in an accident, you’d meant that someone had cut your brake line.”

  “That’s all right,” Mary Grace offered. “No one else thought anything about it, either.”

  “I took Morgan to Orlando. Disney World. Epcot. Sea World. The whole deal. It’s summer time. I have to take him when I can.” Jack spread his hands consolingly. “I hate to burst your investigatory bubble, but I’ve got alibis.”

  Mary Grace drooped. “I think they’ll give you back your painting as soon as they confirm all of that.”

  Jack sighed.

  “So,” Mary Grace asked brightly. “Are you firing me today, or tomorrow?”

  Chapter Twelve – Tuesday, June 21st

  Using one-half cup of slightly rancid mayonnaise as a hair conditioner restores the luster to one’s glorious mane in a dramatic fashion. The caution is to rinse well and to use a nose clip. - Aunt Piadora’s Beauty Hints

  When Mary Grace stumbled out of Pictographs, Inc., there was a brown sedan waiting next to Callie’s Mazda Miata. It looked suspiciously familiar. So did the man who got out when he saw her. Brogan unraveled his length from the car and glared at her from fifty feet away. Even if it hadn’t already been hot to the melting point, the mercury would have popped its glass container if scrutinized under that glare.

  Freezing in place, Mary Grace remembered that she had, in fact, sort of, oh, agreed to tell Brogan where she was going to go and what she was going to do. And once he’d thrown out the ‘honey-don’t-you-bother-your-little-pea-brain-head’ gauntlet, Mary Grace had promptly forgotten to do exactly that. So here she was at Pictographs, interrogating one of the suspects, without any kind of backup, to include Callie of the broken leg, and no one had a clue to where she’d vanished. Except of course, whoever was following her and who had called Brogan to let him know that his caged and cranky chicken had flown the coop again.

  Or perhaps, she considered idly, it’s a coinky-dink and Brogan came by to question Jack himself. And I have the most abysmal timing in the history of the world, unless one counted Janet Jackson’s little ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at half time at the Super Bowl.

  Either way, Mary Grace was royally hosified. Her feet unfroze and she made her way toward the detective, trying to act nonchalant. She would have whistled if she could have found moisture in her mouth to work her lips and tongue. Hey, I’m getting my paycheck. I’m picking up personal belongings. I’m working out details with Jack, Trey, or the secretaries. I could have a thousand legitimate excuses of why I’m here today. It’s not like its dark outside and I’m waving a ‘SHOOT ME, PLEASE!’ sign. It’s broad daylight and no one, I repeat, no one is lurking within a hundred feet of me wearing a trench coat and carrying a pitchfork or other equally lethal implement with which to kill me in a dramatic manner.

  “What are you doing here?” Brogan uttered coldly as soon as Mary Grace stepped within a reasonable speaking distance.

  Mary Grace’s eyes skated first to the right and then to the left. Out of the corner of her eye she could see someone watching her from the inside of the dry cleaning store. She turned her head slightly and the mini-blinds that had been parted skittered back together as the someone vanished into the store. Future reference for Lolita Lewis, but I digress.

  “It’s where I work,” she said lamely, her gaze coming back to Brogan. She nearly couldn’t help herself. At first sight, she wouldn’t have thought he was hot. Mostly, he had been unashamedly leering at her breasts, but the rest of him was becoming an acquired taste. As a matter of fact, she would have called him very tasty, almost better than shopping. Almost. Her thought train stumbled and she quickly added, “You know, to bring in the money, pay the bills, go shopping with, to conquer the world in my own little graphic artistic fashion.” Inwardly she winced at her tone, but Mary Grace knew that she had to stand tough on the issue or Brogan would be dominating her every waking moment of the day, no matter how flavorsome he was or wasn’t.

  Brogan’s eyes rolled. “So if I go inside and say, talk to Jack Covington, he won’t say anything about you being on a temporary leave and maybe asking him questions about the night you were attacked?”

  Mary Grace attempted to look innocent. It was the same method she’d used to her parents a dozen times in her teenaged years, when she had been caught doing something particularly wicked. Th
e bow lips pursed slightly. The eyes widened as far as possible. A hint of moisture leaked from a corner of one eye, and that wasn’t an easy feat to do on command. Her shoulders slumped somewhat as if all the weight in the world rested on her back. Then came the clincher. Her lower lip trembled as if she were about to burst into a fit of noisy, unladylike tears. It wobbled and then quivered in a fashion that would have had the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences bursting into unified applause.

  Brogan stared at her with an intense glower. Mary Grace stoically kept up the look until she realized he wasn’t falling for it. As a matter of fact, he was so used to dealing with criminals and people who lied to him on a regular basis that a twenty-something Catholic woman wasn’t going to be able to pull a fast one on him. He even had a full grown son who had probably practiced on Brogan for a full decade and a half. Mary Grace didn’t have a prayer.

  “I might have asked him a few questions,” she allowed faintly. A little honesty wouldn’t hurt. It might even throw him off the scent. Maybe if I brushed my breasts against his…? Oh, M.G., you hopeless hussy.

  “Goddamnit,” Brogan muttered. “Why me?” Then he added something in Italian and Mary Grace positively blushed when she mentally translated some of the words. She didn’t know some of the others, but she had her suspicions. After a few minutes the words trailed off as he obviously came to the end of his inventory. A predatory light came into his puppy dog brown eyes as he stared down at her, one that made her shiver deep inside.

  “Gutter Italian,” he said, not trying to be particularly helpful. “My grandfather came over from Rome in the 1930s, right before World War II. He grew up in Little Italy in New York City. He didn’t learn English until the seventies and I spent summers with him learning all the gutter Italian I could soak in. My mother, his daughter, was rather appalled at the vast command I held over the naughtiest Italian words she’d ever heard. It doesn’t hurt to keep it up.”

  Mary Grace said, “You’re half Italian?” That’s why he understands and speaks Italian. Oh. Oh.

  “Si, bella,” he said calmly. His anger was gone and she couldn’t help but wonder to where it had vanished.

  “You didn’t mention that to my mother, did you?”

  “It didn’t come up,” Brogan frowned at her. “Why? Would it be a pro or a con?”

  With a huge sigh, Mary Grace said, “Because she’d probably be planning our wedding right now, if she found out, even if you are divorced. I’m pretty sure she has connections in the Holy See to deal with that situation.” She shifted awkwardly. “Did you follow me or was this a coincidence?”

  Brogan yanked a thumb over his shoulder at another plain sedan that she hadn’t noticed. It was blue and a man with dirty blonde hair sat in it, looking vastly amused at their conversation. “Jones,” Brogan said. “He tailed you from your house to the hospital, and then to here. Said you never even noticed he was there.”

  “Oh,” Mary Grace said. “So much for my keen eyesight and ability to perceive danger surrounding me.”

  “Going home now?” Brogan asked politely.

  Mary Grace folded her arms over her chest and thought about it. Having eliminated one suspect hadn’t made her feel happy. On the contrary, it made her feel more confused. At the moment, Jack seemed like the one with the most, if twisted, motive to kill her. He had a secret thing for her, and when he couldn’t get her, then he had come to the conclusion that no one could. However there was a problem with that scenario. “Jack was in Orlando?” she asked meekly. “And in Vegas? Really?”

  Brogan nodded, the expression on his face was carefully blank. “Checked and double-checked. The clerk at his hotel in Orlando remembers him and his son very well because the kid puked all over the lobby one day. Too much candy at Disney World.”

  “Oh,” Mary Grace said numbly. “It wasn’t that I wanted Jack to be the one. It was just that I wanted it to be over.” And everyone else seemed like a lame second. Trey Kennebrew seemed like a harmless, horny kid with too much time on his hands, and a lust for anything with breasts. Lolita Lewis was unknown, but she was a woman. It didn’t seem right that a woman as gorgeous as Lolita would know how to cut a brake line much less build an explosive device and attach it to Mary Grace’s rental car. Finally, she couldn’t imagine what she could have done to Lolita to make her want to commit homicide. They were virtually strangers, not to mention the fact that the other woman didn’t even seem to know Mary Grace.

  Mary Grace wilted suddenly. The life just went right out of her.

  Brogan let out a breath and held open his arms. Mary Grace abruptly melted into their strength and let her suddenly-too-heavy head rest on his muscular chest. An unwanted sniffle emerged out of her nose but she quickly stifled it. She really didn’t want Brogan to think she was the kind of girl to break down into a gelatinous mass of gooey, crying female hormones at the drop of a hat. Or in this case, at the drop of a viable suspect.

  “Aw, God,” Brogan muttered. “Don’t cry. I can’t stand women who cry.” He shuffled his body around digging in one of his pockets and produced a semi-clean handkerchief for her.

  Mary Grace blew her nose in an unladylike fashion and then sedately said, “Sorry.”

  Brogan held Mary Grace by the shoulders and stared intently down into her face. “You sure have mellowed today. You’re starting to worry me.”

  “If Jack isn’t a suspect, then who is?” Mary Grace said. “I’m all right,” she added hastily. “It was just a helpless girl moment. Don’t worry. You won’t catch boo-hoo cooties.”

  He would have shaken her, she could tell by the sudden glare in his eyes, but the other car honked and the detective inside yelled out the window. “There’s a code, Brogan! You or me, Bud?”

  “I’ll go,” Brogan said. “Make sure she gets home, huh?”

  Jones grinned and Mary Grace winced when she realized he was staring at her breasts. She didn’t need to be a telepath to realize what Jones was thinking. He’d seen the portrait and the wheels in his head were going click, click, hubba-hubba, clunk.

  Brogan leaned down and his lips brushed Mary Grace’s forehead. She quivered with reaction. His clean, male smell wafted across her and sent a sizzle of response down her spine to parts better left unsaid except by gynecologists. But since they were in the middle of a parking lot with multiple nosy witnesses, he pulled away with a woeful expression and got into his sedan.

  As Brogan drove off, Mary Grace got into Callie’s Miata and didn’t have a clue what she was going to do next. However, all bets were off since her mother was waiting for her at her house.

  •

  Ghita Castilla was a nice looking woman of fifty-three. She and her husband had retired early thanks to the investment capabilities of her brother, Ernesto. They’d sold their Dallas home and moved to Florida, happily exulting in the warm sea breezes that blew in from the ocean. Therefore she had time to have her hair cut and styled once a week. Its color was startling white, which was all the more startling to Mary Grace because she knew her mother had hair the color of a Naval destroyer. Ghita’s nails were also manicured and painted a demure pink. She wore an ECI printed tie-sleeved tunic with magenta and purples colors intertwining in it and white cotton capris with white sling back wedge shoes.

  Mary Grace knew it was all clever camouflage for the devilish she-beast that was her mother. Oh, I should give her some credit. She taught me how to shop. Especially during sales. I can hear her voice in my head now, ‘Shop for clothes on Tuesdays. Don’t take any crap from sales people. Always show up on time for early bird sales. Drink plenty of Gatorade. Clench your legs together if you have to pee. An elbow surreptitiously rammed into another woman’s solar plexus will deter her from stealing your shopping find, every single time.’

  Ghita waited for her daughter on the couch in her own living room while she sipped coffee from one of Mary Grace’s mugs. Damn, Mary Grace thought. I should have never given her a key. She considered. Or I should have changed the loc
ks and not told her when they moved to Florida.

  “My own daughter,” Ghita said pleasantly. “My own daughter. Who would have ever thought?” It was as if Mary Grace had taken a sharpened pick axe, let it smolder in an oven of thousand degree coals, and then plunged it into her mother’s unsuspecting back. That or Mary Grace had deliberately not told her about a sale at The Galleria.

  Mary Grace sat on the chair opposite her mother and proceeded to get comfortable. Ma was winding up for the long haul and it didn’t hurt to be relaxed while enduring the duration of her tirade. Ghita had been thwarted by Mary Grace’s head injury of the previous day and Mary Grace had only barely escaped her mother spending the night regardless of the lumpy bed in the spare room because of the emergency room doctor’s insistence that Mary Grace was perfectly fine and could be left alone. However, Ghita was aware that her offspring was injured and could not endure a few select words from her mother, so she had withheld from what would have been a time-consuming, pitiless diatribe of phenomenal proportion.

  “Ma,” Mary Grace said calmly. “I told you before. I didn’t want to worry you and Dad. Besides, I didn’t know someone was really trying to kill me until last Friday night.”

  Ghita’s finger shot out, stabbing directly at Mary Grace’s chest. “And you should have been on the phone the very next instant after you knew. After all, we’re family. My own daughter doesn’t tell me that her life is at risk from a homicidal maniac.” Her pointing finger withdrew and the entire hand fluttered dramatically over her chest as if she were having heart palpitations. “I should learn from Mrs. Roberta J. DeMarco from the old neighborhood. A woman who would gossip to Satan about her own sister’s affair with the postman.”